You Ran Out of Range

Some of you can’t sustain what you’re attracted to

Does knowing me more make you love me less, or does it just expose the point where you run out of range?

I only seem to ask after people leave. Never while they’re still here, performing interest, mistaking access for depth, confusing proximity with capacity.

Joan Didion said people tell you who they are and you ignore it. I think people also tell you how far they can go, and you overestimate it because they sound convincing.

They always do in the beginning.

Everyone is articulate when nothing is being asked of them.

The shift is never dramatic.

It’s subtle.

Embarrassingly subtle.

The tone flattens.

The pauses stretch.

You can actually feel them recalibrating in real time, like they’ve just realized this isn’t casual anymore and they didn’t sign up for… substance.

And I replay it in my head like evidence. Not because i’m confused.

I’m actually very clear.

I just like to locate the exact moment someone realizes i’m not going to stay palatable.

Sylvia Plath had her fig tree. What with all those lives, all those versions.

What she didn’t mention is how many people will sit under your tree, analyzing it, romanticizing it, quoting it back to you, as long as they’re never expected to climb.

Some of you are very good at that.

Observing.

Commenting.

Circling people who live the way you theoretically would.

“that’s so me.”

“I was literally thinking about that.”

No, you weren’t.

You were thinking about the version of yourself who would.

And they’ve been hypothetical for a while now. Because the second something requires you to adjust —actually adjust, not just rephrase it—you disappear.

Not loudly. That would require conviction.

You fade.

Suddenly overwhelmed.

Suddenly busy.

Suddenly “in a weird place right now.”

Right.

It’s not that you don’t feel.

You do.

You just don’t have the stamina to sustain it once it stops flattering you.

That’s where most of you fall apart. Because love, when it’s real, stops being aesthetic very quickly.

It asks things.

It exposes things.

It removes your ability to stay exactly as you are and still feel like you’re participating and some of you would rather keep your personality intact than risk being changed by anything real.

So you leave.

Not because I became harder to love.

Because I stopped being easy to experience.

I used to adjust for that. Shrink. Soften. Translate myself into something that didn’t require much from anyone.

It worked. People stayed longer.

They were also significantly less impressive because the version of me they could handle wasn’t particularly… worth staying for.

And I think that’s the part no one says out loud.

Some of you don’t lose people because you’re too much.

You lose them because at some point, you stop being something they can consume without consequence and that’s where their interest ends.

Quietly.

Predictably.

Almost politely.

Like it was always going to end that way.